Sketchbook - Simon Engelbrecht

Nostradamus

Hey guys,
Haven't posted any kind of works on here in years! scary stuff
At any rate, not gonna post any 3d here, since I mostly draw but it will come as I progress at my education.
I'm just gonna post stuff I'm currently working on and I'll update them in this here thread )
Harsh(or not hard) crits are very welcome




Thanks for looking

wake

Hey man, cool stuff. What I would say is try to be a little more confident with your mark making-- you've got some good looking pieces but they suffer a bit from 'hairy' linework.

Also, don't cheat yourself on the feet-- you have these solid starts on both top and bottom concepts but then you get to the feet and they go all cattywhompus. They're bastards I know but take the extra time to try and nail them.

Proportionally the knight's head is too elongate for a realistic portrayal, but as a stylistic element I think it meshes well with the piece. I really hope you finish the knight-- he's got a lot of character and could turn into a really great looking piece.

The main issue your value study suffers from is the fact that you're painting with too small a brush. Zoom out and crank that brush size-- you'll actually work faster and the work will resolve better, and you'll avoid the blocky, meaningless markmaking like what you have going on around the forehead.

Good luck man, I wanna see more.

Nostradamus

Hey wake, thanks for taking the time to stop by and post! Some really awesome pointers
I've tried starting with bigger brushes and it already seems much nicer, although the 3 heads I've done are kinda meh

Oh yea, I am not entirely sure what you mean about my feet? are they just weird looking or are you saying I should go into more detail with them?
thanks!

wake

about the feet; you don't have to go into more detail, just try to be a little more precise with your forms-- right now they're a little flat and amorphous.

You also need to raise the far knee on the knight guy. Right now the lower leg is a little too short and the angle from the knee to the ankle is too severe-- makes the knee look hyper-extended.

and go bigger with the brushes! You're still painting too small, and you end up with the chicken-scratchy look that the turtleneck guy has going. Larger brushes mean less work and softer transitions, which are important for human faces. For example, back on turtleneck man, you have some of these pencil-thin lines of shading around the philtrum and the eyes-- 5 bucks says you were zoomed in really close when you were rendering those, and at the time they looked fine. The major pitfall of zooming in too much is that you lose perspective with the rest of the piece, and you render each area in isolation as opposed to considering the image as a whole. That's also why you've got some really wonky proportions, like tiny nostrils and a giant upper lip.

I'll see if I can't do a quick paintover to help illustrate what I'm talking about, but keep on truckin, you're on the right course. It took me years to correct some of the bad habits I'm telling you about.

And I'd say #2 is the best of your faces, it's nice and loose, and you did a better job of staying big with the brushes.

wake

here-- I did this in 15 minutes, and completely zoomed out the entire time. Do you see how I'm using great big brushes and brush strokes? That's how you lay down good solid base values and then you can go in and star doing some details.

So yeah, good luck mate

Nostradamus

Thanks bud, havent had time to draw this weekend much but I'm gonna keep trucking, paintover is immensely appreciated

Medestruit

The octo-hair chick would make such an awesome shirt illustration, hah >.<